


unless

by midnightkey



Category: The Lorax (2012)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-08 20:06:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6871495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightkey/pseuds/midnightkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"<b>Unless</b> someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	unless

The Once-ler liked to remind himself that his family loved him. Even if they forgot, all the time. ( _All the time._ _ **All the time.**_ )

He is three, five, seven, when his father disappears, instead of before he was born. His brothers and his aunt and his uncle like to hold this over his head. They like to pretend his father left because of him. (He thinks that this isn't so, _it isn't so_ , and he almost believes it. Almost.) His mother never talks about his father. It is a forbidden topic, the Once-ler's father.

(Once-ler never asks why. _Why did he leave, why didn't he stay, why weren't we good enough for him?_ (Though the last one is secretly _why wasn't_ _ **I**_ _good enough for him?_ ))

Yes, he did like to pretend his family cared, though they never liked him much. Or at all. There is a lot of pretending in his formative years. There is a lot of time to think in those years, too, for all the lack of attention his family paid to him. And for all that time to think, out came inventions - failed ones. _Of course,_ his family says, _of course they failed. It's all they are: failures. Just like you, isn't it funny? You're just like your inventions._ He almost begins to believe it. (This is a lie. He does begin to believe it, at least for the majority of his childhood. There is no "almost" about it.)

He is nine when he realizes his family has abandoned him. He is nine and it is the middle of the night and he is locked out of his own home. He is nine, it is cold, it is raining, and he is trying to rationalize all these things his family has done to him. (They love him, don't they?)

It works for a very long while.

*******

He has a tree house, when he's eleven. His brothers have grown tired of it, as they always do. (Most of the Once-ler's things are second-hand. The only thing that isn't is that old bass guitar his father left behind.) He doesn't care that it's second hand, this time, because his family wouldn't bother him up here. (Not that they ever cared what he did.)

The tree house lasts him five years, until he can't make it any taller. His mother calls him a weed, and he isn't quite sure what she means by it. (Then again, he is never quite sure what his mother means by anything. She could have meant he was growing like a weed, or that he _was_ a weed. He'd rather it be the first.)

The Once-ler is sixteen, in a tree house that is now far too small for his height, when he thinks of the thneed.

*******

The thneed lasts him two years instead of five, or at least the idea of it. (He has a jingle for it in one. It's a work in progress.) He thinks that it might be made of truffula leaves.

And the tree house--

The tree house is a safe space, at this point, more for hiding from his family than it is for anything else. (If one were to look inside years later (that is, if it were theoretically still standing), they would find two years' worth of planning and planning and planning. _All for what,_ they might wonder.

 _All for what_ , indeed.)

So the Once-ler hides in his tree house, planning and planning and planning for two years, accumulating other inventions if not to keep his family from getting too curious. He starts ignoring his family's taunts the year between his seventeenth and eighteenth birthdays. He stops believing them, for that one year. (And almost another one, if not for--well. That comes much later in our Once-ler's life.)

He is seventeen and a quarter when he first mentions the thneed. His family laughs and taunts, as they always have - though, this time, he is less fazed by it and pretends they're trying to be supportive; upset him so he'll want to prove them wrong out of spite. Of course. (This rationalizing business has worked wonders. It's worked eight years, though something is telling him it might be unhealthy.)

His father's bass guitar needed to be tuned, and it needed new strings, and it needed to be _cleaned_. (The jingle is still a work in progress, but he's getting there. He's getting there. The guitar will get him there.) It is the only thing of his absent father he has. He liked to think that his father would have brought him along if he'd already been born when his father left. There are a lot of things the Once-ler liked to think about his father.

His family liked to pretend he was why his father left. He didn't want to believe it, though something in him did. Something in him knew that his family wasn't pretending to an extent, either. (They never pretended to hate him and taunt him and mock him, but the Once-ler doesn't realize this until much, much later in his life. He is still young and naïve here, mind you.)

After his eighteenth birthday, halfway to his nineteenth, the Once-ler sets off with nothing but his father's bass guitar, Melvin the mule, a cart, and of course, the basic needs for survival. His family waves him off ( _good riddance_ , he thinks he hears his mother saying some distance away, and Aunt Grizelda's cruel laughter following), and he tries pretending again that they care.

It works.

* * *

A week passes before they stumble upon the Truffula Valley. (Well, a week is a bit of an under-exaggeration. It was much more than that. But a week passes between their last location and Truffula Valley, so it isn't too far off.)

And the Once-ler--

Well, our Once-ler laughs and laughs and laughs, not believing that it was real. (Not very many things in his life are real, if you recall; many years of his life were put to pretending.)  An entire valley of truffula trees!

 _This is it!_ he tells Melvin, oblivious to the animals gathering at his feet, _This is the place!_ (He forgets about wanting his family's approval, if only for that moment.) So, at random, he finds a tree - though "at random" holds very little meaning when there is an entire valley of trees to choose from - and takes it down without a thought.

He pays little attention to the horror of the forest animals at his feet. They aren't his problem, after all; he's sure they can survive without one tree.

He doesn't notice the clouds that gather or the lightning that flashes, or the orange peanut looking creature that pops out of the tree stump, or the way they mourn the fallen tree.

But he does very much notice when the truffula tuft he grabs is attached to another hand, the owner of said hand demanding to know who, exactly, _chopped down this tree_.

 _I think he did it,_ the Once-ler tells him, pointing an accusing finger at some baby Barb-a-loot, only partly joking. He wants to know who this peanut thinks he is, marching up to him all willy-nilly.

 _I am the Lorax!_ the peanut proclaims, though the Once-ler hadn't yet asked, _I speak for the trees._

It sounded crazy, and the Once-ler tells the thing so, and pretends the Lorax is there for a marshmallow instead of trying to lecture him about trees. The Lorax huffs and takes the marshmallow, though claiming he is highly offended by it, and tells the Once-ler, who is nothing more than a _child_ to him, to be gone by sunset.

The Once-ler is not gone by sunset.

*******

The first thneed he makes himself, though the task itself is rather tedious. ( _Nothing unmanly about knitting, no sir!_ )

Of course, it just _happens_ to be the night the Lorax and the forest animals put he, his bed, and Pipsqueak in the river. And of course, he doesn't wake up until the bed flips and he is drenched in freezing water.

The Once-ler thinks that he has never been more terrified in his life. (Though, he is worried about Pipsqueak. Not that he'd admit it, if you were to point it out.)

The Lorax makes him promise not to cut down any more trees. He isn't quite sure if he'll be able to keep that promise when the thneed takes off, but he'll try.

If only he could find his bed.

*******

He heads out into the town near the valley the next day, intent on selling his thneed. (He had awoken to his house of sorts filled with forest animals and one Lorax. He wonders if it was such a good idea to leave the place in the hands of a peanut.)

The jingle doesn't quite work the way he thought it would. People started throwing tomatoes, at one point. And it goes on and on and on until he just...gives up. Discouraged. Desolate. _Miserable_. The peanut calls him a dictionary and an idiot for listening to the townspeople in the first place. But, well, if he managed to dodge the tomatoes and keep them from getting _too_ smashed - hey, free tomatoes! It had to be better than those infernal pancakes, the Lorax tells him, all unhelpfully. And the marshmallows.

 _You_ ** _ate_** _one,_ the Once-ler points out.

 _**One** _ _is the key word, kiddo._

The Once-ler thinks that living out here might not be too bad, if only he'd at least gotten one person to buy his thneed. Or have second thoughts about throwing tomatoes at him. (Someone was making money off of people by selling them tomatoes to throw at him! Can you even believe it?!)

Well. At least he wouldn't have any reason to cut down any more truffula trees. His father's bass guitar sits crudely fixed at his feet - he doesn't know whether it'll work anymore.

The past week had not been a good week. What was he thinking? The thneed was a dumb idea, anyways. It was lame, to use the town's vernacular. Who was the _idiot_ who came up with that name? ...Right. It was him.

He was beginning to think that his family was right.

*******

He goes into town the next day - without his thneed, and without his jingle. The townspeople look almost ecstatic when they see the thneed's absence. Finally, he'd stopped advertising such a stupid thing!

He thinks he remembers seeing a music store, one of the days that he _was_ promoting the thneed. His father's guitar needed new strings, and it needed to be tuned, and the neck was woefully broken. (That little girl was vicious. She didn't need to go _that_ far to make a point. Didn't she have parents who taught her not to destroy other people's things?)

And if there wasn't a music store-- well, he'd just have to improvise. The town was nice enough, anyhow, though he preferred the valley. At least the forest animals didn't hate him _or_ his thneed.

Speaking of which, where was the thneed he'd previously brought to town? He had tossed it aside in a fit of self-pity, and he hadn't seen where it'd fallen.

Hm. The townspeople had probably desecrated it by now, if they hadn't completely destroyed it. The Once-ler supposed it didn't matter much what they had done with it; it wouldn't be much use if it was ruined beyond repair.

Unless...unless someone had liked it.

But that was wishful thinking.

*******

There hadn't been a music store, but fortunately he'd had guitar strings anyway - now to figure out who it was that was tumbling down one of the many hills in the valley and making a _ruckus_.

It was a person from town, to his surprise; not only was it a person from town, it was a person from town with his thneed!

 _You left this behind!_ they say, looking at it curiously all the while.

Our Once-ler stutters and stumbles in surprise, tripping over his own legs. (The struggle of being woefully tall and towering over most everyone.) _It's not--it isn't destroyed,_ he says not so smartly, then: _I was trying to sell it but no one liked it so I stopped trying and_ _\--_

The person laughs and he isn't sure if they're laughing at him or not, though he's betting on the first. (The Once-ler is someone foreign to kindness and being cared for, and it is what's keeping him in the valley. The animals like him well enough. The townspeople do not. It is an obvious fact to anyone that he preferred the willing trust and kindness of the valley's animals to the lack of human decency shown to him by his family and the townspeople.)

 _It's nice,_ the person says, meaning it, _meaning it_ , and the Once-ler can't believe it, for all the days he spent thinking not a single soul liked his thneed.

He was beginning to think that his family was wrong.

* * *

He starts promoting his thneed again within the week, to both the despair and glee of the townspeople.

He gets the name of whoever was causing all that ruckus out in the valley and startling the animals ( _Norma Wiggins_ , she tells him; she doesn't look much older than him), and he heeds the Lorax's advice on the tomatoes to everyone's relief. (It wasn't like he could live on pancakes and marshmallows, anyhow; there weren't many nutrients in either, though they were tasty enough.)

Well. He was promoting his thneed again, the townspeople were back to throwing tomatoes, things were as normal as they _could_ be. He'd be fine if he could just get someone to buy a thneed.

 _Eventually_ , he tells himself. _Eventually_.

(He isn't sure anymore how much of his life is real and how much of it is pretended. He's hoping that most of it is real.)

*******

He makes up a new jingle for the thneed, to all the animals' chagrin (except the Humming Fish, of course, though they always enjoyed a tune).

It's been ages since he'd been back in his sleepy old town, though he couldn't say he missed it much. (Or his family. He spent his whole life wanting their approval, trying to win it. It might have been all for nothing in the end. He hopes it hadn't been. He's hoping the thneed might change that.)

Here, our Once-ler is nineteen, three months of the way to twenty, no longer stuck planning in a tree house far too small for his height. Here, the thneed is known, despite being made fun of initially. At least, the Once-ler thinks, they aren't throwing tomatoes or breaking guitars anymore. (Shame, really, about the tomatoes. Now he'd actually have to buy them.)

But the peace of Truffula Valley is short lived.

*******

It starts when travelers begin to trickle through town, heading to desert cities, to ocean side towns, to places that had no name but were still heard of.

It starts with the Once-ler donning his guitar and thneed, though not yet the jingle, sat in the shade of a particular gazebo, and a traveler approaching about the thneed. (They are a faceless person in the Once-ler's memory of them, fuzzy and blurred. All he knows is that they were asking after his thneed. All he remembers is hoping that they'd like it.)

They smile and putter over and ask after the thneed like it's the easiest thing in the world - _fine thing, isn't it,_ they say, smiling with an emptiness that the Once-ler hardly notices. (The empty smile is more from habit than it is anything else; empty smiles got people to leave you alone once they caught on.)

 _Yes! Yes, it is,_ the Once-ler says, startled and wary, wondering what the catch is with this one. No one here had liked the thneed, at least not anyone he knew of. What difference did it make if they were a traveler?

 _It's only $3.98,_ he adds, cautiously hopeful that this person liked his thneed even if the town didn't. The traveler's empty smile goes by still unnoticed, and the Once-ler finally, _finally_ manages to sell a thneed.

*******

After the first, there comes more in slowly increasing numbers, and eventually--

Eventually the town gets in on it, too, when the stream of travelers stops flowing, despite there being the odd group of people still holding out on mocking him and his thneed. Norma ends up helping out, knowing how to knit and all, but eventually...

Well, eventually his thneed takes the town by storm, surprisingly. And eventually, he takes to calling his family, despite the Lorax advising against it.

After all...

How bad could this possibly be?

* * *

He keeps his promise, at first. Gathering the tufts of the truffula trees manually is slow, but sustainable, and the environment can survive this way, at least.

But the peace is thin, and it is fragile, and it is broken, of all people, by his mother.

*******

He lets his mother talk him into breaking his promise. Thinking back, all he ever wanted was his mother's approval - it was hardly about the rest of his family.

The Lorax calls him _better than this_ \- better than cutting down the trees, he assumes, though he suspects there is something more to it than that. Better than breaking his promise, he thinks. (The Once-ler pushes this one to the back of his mind. He'd rather not remember the exact moment he tossed away his morals for his mother's approval.)

He certainly was better than this, the Once-ler thinks. Some part of him is saying that he should listen to the Lorax. It was a part of him that he had hardly ever listened to, so he didn't listen to it now. It also happened to be the part of him that wouldn't let him pretend his life was fine. That he was okay.

But the trees are hardly falling like flies, and there were still miles of Truffula Valley to cover - it would take ages for them to cut all the trees down.

Two years, as it would turn out, is not ages to ruin the environment. It does not take them ages to ravage the land and keep on biggering and biggering and biggering. It doesn't take ages for the thneed to take the rest of the world by storm, for the Once-ler to abandon who he had previously been and step into this new skin made of fine, glittering things.

Here, our Once-ler is twenty one, hardly _our_ Once-ler anymore, blinded by success and ambition and maybe even the want for his family to care about him.

He takes to wearing sunglasses despite there being no sun and no light but the one from the thneed factory - tinting the smog blue so that perhaps he could pretend that his biggering wasn't harming a thing. The suit he wears is a deep, rich green, and Norma accuses him of choosing green because it reminded him of money. (She is wrong in this respect, though the Once-ler doesn't tell her this. The suit is green because the part of him that won't let him pretend remembers when the Truffula Valley had teemed with life. When he had pretended to be irritated with the animals practically living in his makeshift house. When he was starting to be alright, now that he was away from his family.

When he had been happy.)

The animals have all but stopped visiting since the thneed took off. Even Melvin has stopped listening to his ramblings, and he doesn't know what the mule is doing anymore, but Melvin sure isn't sticking around him.

(He doesn't miss it. He doesn't. He's fine.)

Two years was not ages. And it certainly took as long to get to the very last truffula tree.

*******

The felling of the last tree happens almost in slow motion, landing with a thud that shakes the earth beneath their feet. _Maybe that'll stop you,_ the Lorax says morosely, drooping underneath the weight of all those trees that had fallen.

The Lorax sends the animals to find a new home, one that was unpolluted and safe. And the Once-ler...

He tries keeping them there despite knowing they couldn't stay. He pretends that they'll find a new home somewhere, safe from him. He hopes.

The Lorax leaves, too, lifting himself by the seat of his pants into the smog filled sky, leaving behind nothing but the stone-cut word _unless_.

And so the Once-ler is left behind in the wasteland he had created, a constant reminder of the mistakes he had made. The thneed, too, is a harsh reminder of those, and he thinks that he should have seen this coming, that he should have listened to the part of him that wouldn't let him pretend.

 _Be careful which way you lean,_ the Lorax had told him, and he understands it now - he had flown too close to the sun.

Here, the Once-ler is twenty one, left helpless and hopeless and broken beyond belief: manipulated and abandoned by his family. Ruined by his own mistakes. Left behind by what had become a makeshift family for a makeshift boy that no longer existed. (His old self is someone he could never return to. Redemption is an option that is decades away.)

He is angry, bitter, resentful - the _why_ is self-explanatory.

There is no one left to fool but himself. He cannot even pretend this away, the dust and destruction and the dark, dark sky.

Pretending never works again.

* * *

He finds a seed hidden in the crevices of the _unless_ , its brown shell a stark contrast against the desolate landscape. He clings to it like a lifeline, and it is one, in a way.

( _I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry_ , he says, over and over and over, like he could be heard, like he wasn't alone--)

He doesn't know whether the seed had been left behind by the Lorax or if it was from one of the trees, but...

Either way, he was being given a chance.

*******

He doesn't plant the seed. The valley is too far gone for it to grow; even the circle of rocks that accompanies the _unless_ provides no soil good enough for the seed. The air burns now, with every breath.

He has been left with nothing but a ring of stones and a single seed. (A seed that is his only chance for redemption, for _forgivenes_ s--)

The valley is nothing more than a graveyard now: for the trees, for the animals, for the enviroment...for him. (For the remnants of a boy that used to exist. That _still_ exists, somewhere - in a valley, in a town, in a makeshift home with a makeshift family, in an old bass guitar that had been his father's. Just not in him. Not anymore.)

The Lorax had called him _better than this_ \- better than listening to his family, better than breaking his promise, better than being blinded by the success of his thneed.

Better than what had become of him: bitter, regretful, guilty. A recluse, a man who had nowhere to go, no reason to leave, and no one left to care.

*******

The lerkim is the only place the smog-filled air doesn't touch, hasn't yet contaminated. The air inside is hardly any better, but it's cleaner and breathable, however stale it might be.

The Once-ler stops talking, after a while. There's no point in talking to dead air, to an empty house, to his own voice bouncing off the walls. So he stops talking in the months (and eventually years) that follow. Here, he is still relatively young, hardly out of his twenties, and stuck living in what has become a harsh reminder of his mistakes.

His father's old guitar - _his_ guitar, now, he supposed - played nothing but broken notes now (kind of like himself). His final thneed remained tight 'round his neck, another reminder of the first and last tree that had fallen, that had shaken the earth when they landed and had been mourned as readily as they'd been cherished when they stood.

The Once-ler stays holed up in his lerkim, with a boarded up window and nothing but memories of the forest that once covered the entire valley. The truffula trees he missed enough that he held on to his thneed, associated with now distant memories of Barb-a-loots eating fruits in their Barb-a-loot suits and Swommie-Swans dotting the whole sky orange and the Humming Fish singing a tune of some sort, filling the air with lilting songs.

He had stopped pretending when they'd all left, the animals and the Lorax along with them, forced to face the reality he'd caused of a desolate, destroyed, dead land. There was no running from it now - he was living it. Living _in_ it. It was why he had boarded up the window, why he never left the lerkim, why he never ventured far from that room facing most of the vast landscape.

We can hardly call the Once-ler _ours_ anymore, for he'd abandoned the Once-ler we knew just over a decade ago, who had been content to let the animals stay in the tent-structured home he'd had, to persist in promoting his thneed in that small town (now Thneedville, as he can see from even the boarded up window), to follow Norma in traversing the valley. That Once-ler he'd left behind. The one we have now is a broken one, a lost one, a hopeless one.

But let's have hope for him yet, shall we?

*******

The years pass, and he sees his hair going grey, the only sign of time passing in this crushing silence. He has the lerkim fitted with mechanisms to keep people from snooping, if anyone dared, though the state of the land was enough to discourage anyone, even himself. The road leading to this place is marked as The Street of the Lifted Lorax - a gravemarker of sorts, a headstone. A gray fog had settled over the place in the months following the fall of the last truffula tree, all smoke and smog and opaque, curling at its edges. It got thicker the further in the valley you went, and the air worse. A splotch of gray on maps and landscapes.

In the decades that pass, not a soul passes by except the odd one that gets thrown out from Thneedville for who knows what.

(He never bothers to ask why, or even make himself known, but he notices that they all have the same shell-shocked look about them from seeing the state of the place. They must be very shut in out there in Thneedville.

He watches them all wander further in, unaware of the valley's now-present dangers. He watches them all die out here, in this wasteland of a valley. There is no hope for anyone out here.)

No one dares pass through. Willingly, at least. No one ever makes it out alive.

Until the boy.

* * *

 

The boy shows up asking after trees. Real ones.

In all the decades he'd spent in his lerkim, no one had ever asked about trees. Not that he'd ever offered to tell anyone, but he had hoped. He didn't think anyone still cared about trees. But he had hoped, all the same.

The boy comes asking after trees, and calls himself Ted, and the Once-ler wonders who would venture all the way out here to hear about _trees_. He looks down at the last thneed that he'd kept, and thought of the life he'd chosen to lead; left with nothing but the very last Truffula seed.

He looks down at the boy, eyes young and bright, undeterred by reality; irrationally optimistic, not unlike--

 _It's because of me_ , he tells Ted of the trees, of the valley's destroyed state. Where it had once been bright and cheerful and light, it was now a monochromatic landscape with whatever dangers that lurked beyond the lerkim hiding in the smoke. Not even he, who knew this valley far better than those who ventured here, had dared to explore what had become of the Truffula Valley.

The Once-ler, pensive, thought of the tale that he'd be telling, of how the once living valley had fallen, of his own mistakes. Six decades he'd been in this place, looking out to the town that didn't care to know about trees nor the valley nor their own town. How much ignorance did they live in, the people of Thneedville, living in an artificial city with not a living thing but themselves?

Six decades he'd spent out here, whittling away the time, with no one and nothing for company but the shlop and the smog and the old crows whose caws were the only sound around here these days. He had watched people die here. (And he wouldn't watch this one.)

It was quiet uptown.

*******

This boy, the Once-ler thought, was awfully _insistent_ on hearing about trees. It was about a girl, he was sure; no boy ever did something _this_ stupid twice. (Except for...well, himself. And look at where that got him.) It was odd, talking to someone after decades of silence. All things tended toward entropy, and so did he. However long that might take, he was willing to wait for it.

All he'd ever wanted then...all he'd ever wanted was his family's approval. He doesn't know what happened to them, in the end. Dead, most likely, if not disappeared off the face of the planet. Thinking back, he doesn't know how he ever stuck with them.

(The words _If you stand for nothing, then what'll you fall for?_ come back to him, in a fleeting moment. It had hardly been a few months since the thneed had taken off and already the Lorax - annoying little thing that he was - had taken to pestering him about the trees again. He had changed, our Once-ler, from _a_ Once-ler to _the_ Once-ler, becoming someone much, much different from the boy who had spent his days traversing the valley with Norma. The Lorax had warned him, and he'd been a fool not to listen - the thneed had been a dangerous thing to gamble on.

How far the Once-ler had fallen.)

*******

The walls of Thneedville are visible even from his lerkim, as far out as it is. There is no light that he can see - real light, at least - and the entire city is artificial, with no living things but the people who lived there. (What filtered their air is beyond him. Some sort of fancy doodad, he supposed. He was the reason the town existed, and he didn't even know what it was like inside it. He doubted its people knew who he was. From what Ted has told him, they don't; it was a so called utopia that no one cared to leave.)

He wonders if any of the original townspeople were still there, however old they'd be now. He wonders if anyone knew he existed. Someone ought to have, to tell Ted. If someone were still alive--

Well, that would be a miracle in itself. It was a miracle that _he_ was alive. (Come to think of it, he isn't quite sure how he survived all these years.)

The walls of Thneedville were high and metal and exactly like he'd had it on the model. Until now. Now...now they were knocked down, or beginning to be.

He's seeing the light again, after so many years.

*******

Ted comes back to visit, after the walls have come down and the town is a spot of light on the horizon. The Once-ler hears the boy far before he can see him, what with that infernal scooter. _I did it!_ Ted proclaims, proudly, like he can't see the town from here.

 _I know,_ he says, one of the many first things he's said after decades of silence. There were many things he'd thought in those long years - he'd had a lot of time for thinking, even in his youth - but none of them stood out so much as this one: this boy reminded him of himself.

 _Imagine Thneedville flowered and treed!_ Ted is saying; imagine imagine imagine: imagine being redeemed. Imagine Truffula Valley _alive_ again. Imagine forgiveness for all that he'd done. (It's what he's been imagining for the past six decades. It's what he's been waiting for.)

The girl (Audrey, if he remembers) tags along at some point or another, all bright colors that match the trees; an environmentalist to the end. He ends up pestered with endless questions about trees, even more so than from Ted. (Though he may have suggested he would have left Ted to die if the boy didn't _stop talking_.) Ted brings out his grandmother and she had been just as he remembered, give or take new quirks here and there. He doesn't know _what_ to expect, but she laughs and grins and tells Ted he's an old friend, though he suspects from Ted's reaction that she meant something different than _friends_.

The _unless_ and its ring of stones lies among growing things now, instead of dead ground - the Truffula Valley is alive again. The crows have all but left, and the valley is healing, and the sun has come back in full force. And the animals--

The animals have begun to come back, the Swommie Swans and Humming Fish and Barb-a-loots. (Pipsqueak is hardly a pipsqueak anymore; it's something strange to see the baby Barb-a-loot all grown.)

But they had all come back before the Lorax had, floating down from the clouds onto the _unless_. It was a reunion none of them, he and the animals alike, thought would happen for a long while. And he laughs for the first time in a near lifetime, partly in disbelief, mostly in happiness.

 _You done good, beanpole,_ the Lorax says, the old taunt hardly a taunt, _you done good._

And finally, _finally_ , our Once-ler found peace.


End file.
